February 05, 2013

Cy Young Winner Brandon Webb Retires at 33: Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Webb, the National League Cy Young award winner in 2006 and runner up the next two seasons, has announced his retirement from baseball at age 33. Webb last pitched on the opening day of the 2009 season against the Colorado Rockies, leaving after four innings with shoulder discomfort. Two comeback attempts and shoulder surgeries later, he's throwing in the towel. "I was at the top of my game, at the top of the game and then it was just suddenly over," Webb said. Baseball writer Rob Neyer says Webb threw "one of the most devastating sinking fastballs that anyone has ever seen."

Red Sox fans haven't, mainly because since the team went in the crapper, he was annually held up as "Maybe he comes back and turns into an ace again". I think he replaced Ben Sheets in the role; not sure who takes over now. These stories always make me feel so bad, like Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams, "It was like coming this close to your dreams... and then watch them brush past you like strangers in a crowd."

He made $31,000,000 in his career, won over 20 games in one season, won a Cy Young award, and joins an insanely amazing list of pitchers to finish in the top 3 in Cy Young award voting three years in a row: